Ben Vereen reaches back to find Stepin Fetchit

Most performers don’t get to meet the figures from history they portray. Patti LuPone never said hello to Eva Peron. Tom Hulce didn’t shake hands with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

But Ben Vereen met both of the main characters in Will Power’s "Fetch Clay, Make Man," in which he is starring at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton. First he met Stepin Fetchit, whom he is portraying. Years later, he encountered Muhammad Ali, who is played by Evan Parke.

The play, which begins a five-week run at the Berlind Theatre, has the two African-Americans meeting just before Ali fought his historic rematch with Sonny Liston in 1965. Much of it involves their religious differences: Ali had recently converted to Islam, while Fetchit was a devout Catholic.

Using the stage name Stepin Fetchit, Lincoln Perry (1902-85) made no fewer than 31 films between 1925 and 1935. In them, he always played the role of the shiftless and not-too-bright black man whom white audiences could deride.

"He was a vaudevillian who went to Hollywood in hopes of being a great actor like Paul Robeson," says Vereen. "The studios said, ‘No, we want the Stepin Fetchit you’ve been onstage.’ He was frustrated, but he finally agreed on the condition that he be well paid."

As a result, Fetchit not only became the first black actor to see his name on the silver screen, but also the first one to become a millionaire.

"Then society changed," says Vereen. "Suddenly Fetchit became the symbol of everything the black people wanted to forget." In the next 20 years, from 1936 till 1956, Fetchit made only half as many films — 15. In the 20 years that followed, he made only two.

In 1976, Vereen, a New York-bred veteran of stage and screen, and a Tony-winner for "Pippin," was doing a new musical. It dealt with the career of Bert Williams, an early-20th-century black entertainer who also struggled with prejudice.

"After a performance one night," says Vereen, "Stepin came backstage to meet me. He said, ‘Please do a show on me, so people can understand me.’ "

Vereen worked with Fetchit on a screenplay. Not long after, Fetchit had a stroke and the project was never completed. Some years later, Vereen was doing a benefit in Chicago. At the end, Ali came onstage to be introduced.

"Now, I saw that Ali-Liston fight," says Vereen, "because my mother worked at the Loews’ Kings in Brooklyn, where they were showing the closed-circuit broadcast. While I was watching, I decided to take that book I’d had on my lap and put it on the floor. Suddenly I heard everyone screaming — because Ali had thrown a knockout punch. And I missed it."

Vereen says that soon after Ali took the stage that night in Chicago, so did Stepin Fetchit. "He was in a wheelchair. I could see from his eyes that he remembered me, but he could no longer talk. That was the last time I saw him. But I’ve never forgot my resolve to do something to vindicate him."

Now, under the direction of Des McAnuff ("Jersey Boys"), he will.

"When I read Will’s play," says Vereen, "I found his dialogue was amazingly close to the conversations I’d had with Stepin. Will has allowed me the platform to show what this man had to go through, why he made the decisions he made, and the ridicule he had to face trying to re-establish himself, not as a star, but merely as a man in the black community. I’m grateful for the chance."